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The boy, then aged 14, told police he was beaten, had little food to eat and was even forced to clean up his mum’s used sanitary products in their filthy city home.

She then tried to bully her son into blaming her husband after police started investigating, Plymouth Crown Court heard.

Amanda Bish spent nine years abusing her son (Image: Devon and Cornwall Police)

Jailing her for a total of 40 months, Judge Paul Darlow told Plymouth Crown Court: “The seriousness of these offences against a child, let alone your own child, cannot be overstated.

“The ill-treatment is aimed at a particularly vulnerable person and is an abuse of trust which is bound to have serious physical and psychological effects on the child and involve their degradation as they grow up.

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He told of how his mother would openly describe him using coarse language and shouting that amounted to verbal abuse.

The conditions of the house were described as “squalid” with cat faeces littering the house.

Picture posed by model.

The court heard how the boy was made to clean up his mum’s used sanitary products. He suffered assaults by objects being thrown at him and was spat at. He was hit with a vacuum cleaner pipe and with a metal pole.

Callous slave gang leader treated men as cash cows

A callous woman headed a gang which tricked vulnerable men into leaving her homeland of the Czech Republic for Plymouth - where they were held in slavery.

Ruzena Tancosova, aged 37, and members of her extended Roma family trafficked the men with promises of a better life.

But they were housed in garages and under the stairs and threatened with violence if they tried to flee.

Tancosova and her family fed them meagre meals while forcing them to do menial housework or taking their wages from factory and other jobs.

Ruzena Tacosova (Junior)

Two of the men eventually fled from a family home and police were called.

Five members of the gang were eventually jailed for a total of more than 20 years after two long and complex trials at Plymouth Crown Court.

A judge told the gang they had exploited their victims as "cash cows".

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He jailed Ruzena Tancosova for six and a half years, recommending that she is deported together with her compatriots.

Pregnant Tancosova sobbed in the dock as as they were jailed in November 2016. All five were found guilty after an eight-week trial of trafficking men into Plymouth where they were housed in poor conditions including sleeping in a garage and even a cupboard.

As Ruzena Tancosova (Junior) appeared at court during the modern slavery trials family members were threatening witnesses

Police said they freed eight men from the family’s rented city homes in September 2014.

Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George sexually assaulted children and took indecent photos

Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George sexually assaulted children and took indecent photos of them for her online lover.

She is perhaps the most evil woman of them all.

The mother of two, who described herself to her internet lover Colin Blanchard as a “paedo whore mum”, was sentenced to seven years in prison following an emotionally-charged court hearing in Bristol in December 2009.

George worked at Little Teds nursery in Efford, Plymouth, until her arrest on June 9, 2009 on suspicion of sexually assaulting a number of pre-school children in her care.

Vanessa George

She was also suspected of taking indecent photographs of them and sending them to her online lover, Colin Blanchard in Greater Manchester.

In all she admitted to a total of seven sexual assaults of young children and six counts of distributing and making indecent pictures of children.

She has been eligible for parole for nearly two years, but has yet to be released.

During her sentencing Judge Mr Justice Royce said he wanted the parents and the media to recognise that while he was passing the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection of seven years, "it is, in effect, a life sentence".

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Vanessa George

He said the case had caused "widespread revulsion and incredulity" and had "rocked the city of Plymouth" with the shockwaves extending to every nursery school in the country.

Mr Justice Royce explained the devastation George had wrought upon the families of children who attended the Laira nursery, their torment, sleepless nights and nightmares, their tearfulness and distress.

He noted how some children had begun to display “worrying signs which may be symptomatic of sexual abuse” and highlighted both the suffering of her own family and of her co-workers.

Sick female care worker abused frail elderly residents in home

Christina Sethi, then aged 25, was handed a 10-year jail sentence at Plymouth Crown Court after the full extent of her sick sexual abuse of elderly victims under her care was revealed.

Sethi, from Torquay, admitted five offences of sexual assault between January and May 2015 relating to a vulnerable man and two women, one of which was dying. He passed away before the case came to court.

The court heard how Sethi was visibly seen to enjoy abusing the patients who were classified as “highly vulnerable”, with one of them aged 101. Sethi even filmed and shared the recordings with her then-boyfriend.

The elderly victims did not have the ability to fully understand or tell anyone about what occurred.

Recorder Richard Stead sentenced Sethi to 10 years in prison, but with five of those to be spent on licence.

He told Sethi, who appeared in court via video link, that she “humiliated” people who placed their trust in her and “exemplified the worst fears” of families who put relatives into care.

The court was told that Sethi was a night carer at a care home in Devon, which cannot be named to protect the victims’ identities. Her first victim suffered with Alzheimer’s and had terminal cancer.

She was receiving end-of-life care at the home when Sethi sexually assaulted her using a sex aid.

Sethi was a night carer at a care home in Devon

The Court of Appeal later increased his sentence until 15 years.

Sethi was only found out when a man, who knew the defendant, handed in a laptop computer to police containing the videos of abuse in the recycling basket.

Sethi originally told investigating officers, before a third victim was discovered, that there were no more than two victims and said her boyfriend had “convinced her to do it”. Police dismissed the claim.

Mum shook and beat baby leaving him fighting for his life

A cruel mum who shook and beat her baby to leave him fighting for his life.

Student Elizabeth Wilkins, aged 23, lashed out at her tiny defenceless new-born son in rage and frustration, a jury decided in September.

A judge at Plymouth Crown Court ruled that she would go to prison – but adjourned sentence until December 6 for probation and psychiatric reports.

Escort Wilkins was released on bail, though she is banned from contacting her son.

Wilkins shook him and fractured his ribs on several occasions before banging his head and fracturing his skull.

(Image: Plymouth Live)

The child, just three months old, suffered brain damage two years ago and may have developmental problems as he grows up.

Callous Wilkins, who had been studying law at the University of Plymouth, tried to shift the blame on her former partner and co-defendant, 30-year-old Erick Vanselow.

He was cleared of failing to protect their son – having earlier been acquitted of assaults.

Willkins, suspended from her studies, denied assaulting her child causing grievous bodily harm with intent on September 22, 2016.

That was the day the boy’s head was smashed against a hard surface in the flat the parents once shared in College Avenue in Mutley.

She also pleaded not guilty to assault causing actual bodily harm between August 31 and September 3 in 2016.

(Image: Penny Cross)

A jury unanimously found her guilty on both counts after seven hours of deliberations at the end of a three-week trial.

The panel was not invited to deliver verdicts on alternative counts.

The jury acquitted Mr Vanselow of a single count of failing to protect his son from his birth in July, 2016 until he suffered terrible head injuries on September 22.

Mr Vanselow, who was studying for a masters in international relations, was too emotional to talk after the hearing.

Wilkins, originally from Weston Super-Mare, stood with head bowed and eyes closed as the foreman read the verdicts.

Judge Peter Johnson told her: “Just because I am granting you bail it should not be taken by you as any indication of sentence. This is a very serious case and the inevitable sentence will be a prison sentence measured in years.”

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The exact events which ended in the boy, who cannot be named by court order, in hospital will never be known.

The jury found that Wilkins attacked her son several times, fracturing his ribs and then pointing the finger of suspicion at Mr Vanselow.

She finally banged his head against a heavy object while she was alone in the flat for 90 minutes on September 22.

Wilkins said nothing of what happened and the parents only took him to the GP – who immediately phoned for an ambulance.

Staff at Derriford Hospital reported that Wilkins was strangely unemotional as she learnt of his serious injuries.